Bittner and Twisted

Councillor Genevieve Y Anillos glides to a stop.  Smile a mile wide. Hair flopping around from underneath her bike helmet and of course decorative earrings in the shape of bicycle wheels.  Excited, she greets us. It’s a community garden gathering.  Meeting in a demountable - you know an insulated portable shed on stumps.  We’ve been plugging away in the back blocks, running on air for a few years now.  Councillor Genevieve (Gen Y as she’s known to all locals)  tells us the good news.  Council gets the benefits of the horticultural therapy courses we have been running, the community houses that have plots at the garden, and the guys and gals on community orders from the corrections that have been doing the hard work to keep the garden running.  Of the oldies that plug away at their plots getting their bit of social contact. And of the plot farmers that practice here and make mistakes and learn before heading to their own market garden plot. Gen Y l...

I am a cook and ex-hospo business owner.  I couldn't watch the old MasterChef with the three men.  Watching people being set up to fail is not how it should be.  That it is entertaining to watch people fail.Or setting the expectation that is how life in hospitality is.  15 mins is all it took for me to walk away from the TV in the old Masterchef.  Yes I watched the first season.  I admit.  Then that's it. Now MasterChef is different.  I don't get upset with the way people are treated or the situations the judges put people in.  People put the pressure on themselves.  They show their own knowledge limitations and their emotions are a response to their frustrations and their reality.  Not the judges. I've never watched survivor.  That would be worse for me I think. Imagine if you combined the two, then brought it into suburbia.  A sharehouse in suburbia.  Think RetroSuburbia on steroids.   But the goal was not to g...

Digging is therapeutic for me.  Always has been.  Smelling compost, feeling soils, creating pattens, making mulch and feeding organics to the chooks. Talking with people while digging is better.  Tribal and team work in one. While at the school garden for a dig up, a young person asked me why their employer had to put 9.5% of their pay into an organization that invested it outside their country so that they could get access to it when they moved into a nursing home just to feed themselves? I bit my tongue.  Instead, I ask “Where do you think that 9.5% should go?” “Well”  He starts. “Things are broken so let's fix it for the best.” “ The three main things we need to live are food, water and shelter.  We learnt about Maslow the other day.  So I want half my super to be invested in those. In my community.  Not overseas. Imagine if each town had their own superfund.” he says. I wonder at the way kids flip things.  Drill in and kill the old ideas ...

Riding home from work reminds me its bin night.  Always green bin.  Then either red - rubbish or yellow - recycling.  Tonight it's recycling.  I park my bike, unload my man bag from my panniers and my lunch container then wheel the yellow bin out. Nothing goes in the green bin most weeks.  We have learnt to value the scraps and the organic matter, the grass clippings and the branches.  Why send that energy, that carbon and nitrogen and the minerals in the produce off your land? Manu Re rides past waving frantically for my attention.  He's excitable at the best of times.  More so now.  He shares my passion for food and gardening. Silently pulling up to the curb on his electric cargo bike, he greets me with his french farmyard "Bonjour comrade". "Come see what I found today"  Lifting the lid on square 10 litre ice cream containers reveals cow poo and straw.  Wet and musty.  Wafting up with the bright smells of the dairy floor or ...

Waiting to meet my daughter at the high school gate I get chatting to the Principal Sandy.  How ace to see her greeting the parents by name and fare-welling the kids. Talk turns to the farm gate and the food swaps that are taking place. She wants more but how to progress.  What does it look like? I talk about my visit to my Uncle Berti, his farm and my Mums little plot and her mini wicking beds on her back patio and what retirement villages could look like across Australia.  We talk about the permaculture design course I finished recently, and of the teachers that were on the course and of other teachers in the city who were introducing food production to their curriculum, about the Stephanie Alexander program in primary schools and of the pilot they are running for high schools.  Then of the high schools around the country that have built a curriculum to teach permaculture. When you talk about it like this, it's not hard to motivate people.  Or to shock them ...

It felt like I was riding on air as I travelled back home after visiting the Urban Farm.  Seeing the veggie rows forming was a sign of hope.  And possibilities. And a future. That's what happens when you garden - growing food or flowers, it doesn't matter.  You are practicing mindfullness.  Being in the present while preparing your body and your land for the future. I think of the produce already growing in my garden at home in North East Victoria in April.  Raddish and rocket, my go to crops.  So quick to grow - 40-60 days to harvest.  They are perfect market garden crops.  Then the pick and come again spinach and salad mix.  The test with the silverbeet stalk that has regrownfrom last year - an experiement that seems to be working.  Winter is brasica time so my Kale is already in.  Beetroot?  None in but the most under rated vegetable.  You can pickle or preserve it's root, grate it fresh, eat the leaves fresh and s...

First please read Episode 1 The Future is how we imagine it Waking to more news of drought, resource depletion and fossil fuel consumption doesn't bode well.  Try and find the good today Eric.  Food would be a good place to start.  Local of course so I commit to buying some local produce this week.  Where from? Who knows. I head off early to work, watering the couple of small plots I've taken on at the local community garden.  Great idea - more work Eric.  Take on things then go like crazy to keep up.  Nobody wanted the plots.  Right next to an abattoir - the Feng Shui experts would have something to say about this I'm sure. A call later in the day to Rose, a local who has started up a veggie box subscription using local seasonal produce.  I'm in. That's a start.  There's some fennel too from my plot.  Perfect. I book in to collect my first veggie box on Thursday.  Food shopping on the weekend means I can plan a little on...

" Visi on is not seeing things as they are but as they will be ". There are variations on this quote.  Yes this is Principle 12 of Permaculture.  We use it in times of chan ge.  When we need inspiration, when we need to support our families and loved ones, when people are goin g through a tough time.  Well for current and future generations times just got tougher and reality has hit.  Now is the perfect time to re-image the future.  Here's my take on what the future could look like.  It's one I am working towards in my own little space, but collectively, unless we are all doing little bits in our spaces, not much will change.  These ideas are not new.  They exist in bits and pieces.  People are doing many of these now.  I have just built the ideas into a story as to how I'd like my reality and that of my daughter and her friends to look like. If you think I have written about you, I hope you take it as a complement.  You ...

Recently I joined an online event at Moral Fairground that took a closer look at taking steps towards creating safer and healthier urban landscapes for us all, by us all    Being able to access the knowledge of this group was empowering and humbling.  Being able to ask the tough questions about where we were headed and get honest answers was refreshing and educational. Understanding that industrial global agriculture has been the driver for the climatic and societal change we are experiencing .  Note: Let me state clearly that I do not believe agriculture per se is the problem. It's where and how we grow food, how we transport food, and the complexity of the fossil fuelled supply chain that is.   I know a few of you will jump to the defence of the way we live our lives but it's ok to change, to get to work learning and re-engaging with your community, to connect with the farmers that grow your food and to grow your own.   Defining your succes...